


Keepers of the Rift

by BardofHeartDive



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Biscuit is fine, Control Ending, Destroy Ending, F/M, I promise, Lost Love, Parallel Universes, Post-Canon, Reunions, Virmire (Mass Effect)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:28:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23226313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BardofHeartDive/pseuds/BardofHeartDive
Summary: Years after the end of the Reaper War, Ashley is sent to investigate an anomaly on Virmire. She makes a discovery that shatters history and then rebuilds it anew - for the galaxy, and for herself.
Relationships: Kaidan Alenko/Ashley Williams
Comments: 20
Kudos: 27
Collections: Spectre Requisitions 2020





	1. Ashley

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ziskandra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ziskandra/gifts).



> So many thanks to the amazing [RockPaperbackScissors](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RockPaperbackScissors) for being an awesome beta and especially for writing my summary for me. Also for waving all the pom-poms for me, along with [foxy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ayambik). As always, a huge round of applause to the mods for running this event - I look forward to it every year!

Ashley lurched when her ship changed directions, sending a shower of hamster bedding from the bag in her hands. The cage she had been cleaning clattered to the floor, along with nearly everything that had been on her desk. 

Fortunately, Biscuit himself was in his ball and besides rolling across the room at speeds no hamster could achieve alone was fine.

“Just once . . . ” she seethed, trying to wipe the aspen shavings off her shirt and only spreading them further. “One time I’d like to be able to go to all the places I make reservations for.”

Biscuit ran the ball out from under a chair and squeaked in agreement. 

The war had been over for nearly a year and half, galactic peace restored, and she still hadn’t found the time to take a vacation. Some of the missions had been assigned by the Council or the Alliance but most had come from Shepard, himself. 

If he could be called “Shepard” anymore. Or “he,” for that matter.

She didn’t enjoy thinking about that though, so she picked up the ball and said to the hamster, “Let’s see where our lord and master is sending us now, shall we?”

She tucked him under her arm and started toward the cockpit but stopped after only a few steps. She turned back to the mess on the floor and sifted through it until she found the picture she was looking for. Kaidan’s expression was professionally neutral but she remembered the kindness in his dark brown eyes with perfect clarity. She cleaned a bit of hamster bedding off the glass, much more successfully than her clothing, and put it back on the desk. The rest of it could wait.

Her ship was small, only slightly larger than a single level of the Normandy, so it was a short walk to the cockpit but she dragged it out as long as she could. Trying to put off what she would find there as long as possible. Even after the Crucible fired, after the blue light washed over the galaxy and the Reapers had suddenly started helping the remaining survivors instead of harvesting them, the sight of one through her ship’s virtual windows still made her blood run cold. She turned off the external cameras, put Biscuit’s ball down next to the pilot seat, and pulled up the orders for her new mission, starting with the destination coordinates.

Third planet of the Hoc System, Sentry Omega Cluster.

Virmire.

* * *

While her ship VI flew them to the Reaper’s coordinates, Ashley reviewed the mission brief. An anomaly had been found on the planet and she was being sent to investigate. That was the entire report. It took her three minutes to read it twice and then she had the rest of the trip to kill. 

She picked up the mess, finished cleaning the cage, and gave Biscuit a grape.

Of course Shepard was sending her to Virmire. He’d always sent her wherever he wanted whenever he wanted. Half the time she suspected it was more power trip than tactical. He’d sent her to the Crucible in the midst of the biggest conflict the galaxy had ever known. He’d sent her away when she tried to visit him in lock up without even seeing her once. He’d sent her to safety on the Normandy and left Kaidan to die on a bomb.

She flopped onto her back on the bed and closed her eyes, as if that would shut out the thought. It wouldn’t do any good, thinking about Kaidan making his last stand with his back pressed against an improvised nuke. Worse, it would lead to thinking about other things like the tiny scar across his lip and the bigger one on his side or the faint Canadian accent that only came out when he was tired or tipsy. The way they’d talked for hours, about their families, their childhoods, and lighthouses of all things. Kaidan loved lighthouses and he had told her more than she thought there was know about them over fresh fruit and bagels with lox their first shore leave together.

Their only shore leave together.

The thought didn’t make her eyes water anymore but she squeezed them tighter out of habit. It didn’t matter that it had been almost five years, that they’d only had one leave together, or that she’d only known him a few months. 

Maybe this could be a good thing, she tried to convince herself. A blessing in disguise. There wouldn’t be anything besides a crater and nothing left of the man except her memories but it was the place where he’d died. Maybe going there, seeing it herself, would be a way of finding . . . if not peace, then at least closure.


	2. Virmire

The majority of Virmire was in as good a shape as any planet at this point but Ashley was headed for roughly ground zero of an explosion she’d been able to see from orbit and she expected it would be a fair bit rougher. Fortunately every scan showed no life besides the native flora and fauna and nothing more dangerous than lingering radiation. She landed the ship as close to the site as she could, geared up, and headed out.

Biscuit came too, in a ball she’d adapted to deal with environmental hazards. He didn’t like being left alone on the ship so she took him with her when she could.

According to the readings on her omni-tool the anomaly was several meters underground, directly below ground zero. A basement or bunker, she suspected, and after clearing away the rubble she was rewarded with a passable staircase leading in the direction she needed to go.

The subterranean portion of the building was in much better condition. Once she reached the second basement the only sign of the destruction above was the lack of power and that was an easy fix with a hard reset. The lights hummed briefly and then came on, revealing an empty lab. All of her investigation, including a physical inspection, showed nothing interesting but her omni insisted there was an energy fluctuation smack dab in the middle of the room.

“What do you think, hrmmm?” she asked Biscuit, releasing his ball from the side of her hip “Take a look for me, would you? See if you can find something I missed.”

She knelt to put the ball down on the ground and happened to glance up. From this position, looking from this angle, there was a slight shimmer where the reading should be. She shifted slowly from side to side and it rippled like a heat wave. She stood up and it all but disappeared until she tilted her head just right.

“Well done, Biscuit.”

She pulled up her omni-tool again and scanned the distortion. The readings didn’t make any sense to her but she had the knowledge and computing power of countless cycles at her fingertips. She sent them to the Reaper still in orbit. A few seconds later a response came through with a program attached and instructions for running it. 

A pale blue beam washed over the shimmer. It bounced back at her like light through a prism. For just a minute she could see the air vibrating and then it snapped into place. The shifting blur became a large, clearly defined square, like a mirror reflecting, or maybe leading into, an identical room. In front of her was a figure in a bright blue hardsuit, hunched over a terminal. They were facing away from her, displaying a full array of weaponry on their back. 

Ashley pulled her own rifle and said, “Stop. Keep your hands where I can see them and turn around slowly.”

The figure followed her instructions. They took a startled step back when they saw her and gasped, “Ash?”

Her stance faltered at the sound of her name. The voice was impossibly familiar. The figure pointed to their helmet. When she nodded, they undid the seals and took it off. She dropped her gun, not realizing it had fallen until she heard it hit the floor.

“Kaidan!” 

The sound of another voice brought Ashley out of her stunned stupor though Kaidan’s attention stayed on her a moment longer. A woman, also armed and armored but wearing a suit of N7 armor, appeared from behind a line of machines. “I found . . . I’m not sure what I found. Something. What do you think of this?”

“I think you should see what I found first,” Kaidan said, pointing at Ashley.

The woman stopped when she saw her but it was the thing she’d found that mattered to Ashley. She was holding Biscuit’s ball in her hands. But Biscuit wasn’t in it. Instead there was a husk of a hamster, its blue eyes luminous as it scrabbled against the plastic and hissed at them.


	3. Biscuit

Ashley had gotten used to the impossible becoming reality in the last few years. At least as much as a person could. The geth had attacked a human colony. Then they found out the attack was at the behest of ancient, sentient machines trying to destroy all intelligent life. Then those same machines attacked, the galaxy went to hell in a handbasket, and their only hope was the incomplete blueprints of a prototype weapon designed piecemeal over hundreds of cycles of extinction. And then, the cherry on top of this sundae of absurdity, Shepard disappeared while firing the weapon which hadn’t destroyed the Reapers but allowed him to control them. 

If you believed the message they’d broadcast. Ashley was still on the fence about that one. But at least they’d stopped killing people.

Now she was standing under the place where she should have died, looking into what she could only describe as a parallel universe, at a red haired, green eyed, female Commander Shepard who was holding a Reaperized version of her Biscuit.

She wanted to laugh.

“Ashley.”

She wanted to cry.

“Ash.”

Instead she looked up into the eyes of a man she never thought she’d see again anywhere but her dreams. She had spent so long imagining them she was scared she’d forgotten them, or worse embellished them beyond reality. Were they really that warm, that kind, that gentle?

And the answer was yes. They were exactly like she remembered them.

Clinging to that fact kept her from laughing or crying when she turned to the other so-called Shepard and said, “Can I have him please?”

“Oh.” Her green eyes widened as she realized the situation. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

The genuine sympathy in her voice only enforced the disconnect between this exceptionally human woman and the commander who had hardly any humanity even before he immortalized himself in the Reapers. It should have been a nice change but under the circumstances it was just unsettling.

She passed the ball over. One moment Biscuit was a tiny gray monster, covered in lights and wires. Then he crossed from the other side back to Ashley’s and he was the same adorable space hamster that kept her awake running on his wheel at all hours of the night. He rubbed his paws over his face and blinked at her like he always did when he wanted a grape.

“What the fuck?” 

That sounded almost like the Shepard Ashley knew and resented.

* * *

“How long have you had him?” Kaidan asked, watching Biscuit run over her hands.

Ashley had run every test and scan that she could think of and sent the results to her Reaper escort. All the data said that he was 100% organic pet and not a threat to anyone, at least on the right side of the rift, as they were calling it. The other Shepard - Jane - had stepped away to make a report and she and Kaidan were alone.

“A year, year and a half,” she answered. “I inherited him from Shepard. My Shepard. John.”

Kaidan’s expression went dark for a second, then he swallowed hard and said stiffly, “That’s rough. I’m sorry for your loss.”

She snorted. “Biscuit here is the only nice thing he ever did for me.”

“Can I . . . he trailed off and rubbed the back of his neck. He’d done the exact same thing when she asked him out the first time. “Can I ask you something?”

“Fire away.”

“I - we had an Ashley. Did you have a Kaidan?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think we’re the same? Me and him? You and her?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. The little furrow between his eyebrows was the same, though it was deeper than it had been the last time she’d seen it. But that didn’t seem like the right thing to say so she asked instead, “What was she like?”

“She was really something.” Kaidan smiled softly. She’d seen a smile like that once, when she affectionately teased him for being able to name the most recent keepers of half a dozen lighthouses in Vancouver. “She used to - ”

“Well, it’s sent,” Jane Shepard interrupted. “Either that or lost forever in the space between the stars. Your guess is as good as mine with the comms like they are. We might as well be using tin cans and string, yeah?”

Kaidan laughed his agreement but Ashley shook her head, “Our comms were up in the first 48 hours. Right after the relays.”

“You had working relays after two days?” Jane asked. “Our scientists took months just on the theory of repairs. We didn’t get them actually working until the beginning of the year.”

“We had some . . . help,” Ashley said. “From an unlikely source.”

And then she told them what the source was.


	4. Shepard

They took it better than Ashley expected they would. Kaidan wasn’t a surprise. He waited and listened, nodding here, humming there, but never interrupting. Jane didn’t exactly interrupt either but the way she stalked around the room, her agitation practically radiating off her, was a bit more unsettling than Kaidan’s occasional bob of the head. When Jane seemed most likely to explode, Ashley watched Kaidan’s hands and tried to match her heartbeats to the drumming of his fingers. 

Apparently Jane was as inclined to trust the Reapers as Ashley herself, even if it was in someone else’s reality.

“So they just stopped?” Jane demanded. “They were tearing your fleets apart and then they, what, had a change of heart and decided to do exactly the opposite of what’s been their sole purpose since their creation?”

“If you believe them.” Jane raised an eyebrow and Ashley repeated, “If. Instead of killing the Reapers, the Crucible allowed Shepard to take control of them. That’s why they were suddenly so helpful.”

Ashley would have said it was impossible for Jane to get any paler but at the mention of the Crucible all the blood drained from her face. Her freckles stood out even more when her skin had as much color to it as a sheet of paper.

“And?” There was a distinctly un-Commander-like waver to her voice. “It worked?”

“So far,” Ashley said. “It’s only been - ”

“One year, four months, and twenty-two days,” Jane interrupted. “I’m sorry. I need a minute.”

She disappeared into the room, past Ashley if they had been in the same universe. The urge to follow her, to make sure she was okay, was so strong Ashley half turned after her. Kaidan’s attention was split; his eyes darted between Ashley and past her, presumably to Jane. In the end he let her go and turned back to Ashley.

“She’ll be okay,” he said. “Our Crucible killed the Reapers, but also the geth and EDI. She took it hard.”

“That’s nice.” She realized how that sounded as soon as she said it and hurried to explain. “That she cares. Shepard didn’t even blink when he let the geth destroy the Migrant Fleet.”

“Destroyed the Migrant . . . how’d Tali take that?”

“It killed her. Literally. He didn’t bat an eye about that either.”

“Wait. Tali is dead?”

She had already nodded before she registered what the shock in his voice meant. “Tali’s alive? What about Garrus? Wrex?”

“They’re both fine. Wrex pretends to be grumpy about the half a million baby krogan calling him grandpa but he’s not fooling anyone.”

“You cured the genophage?”

“She cured the genophage.” He studied her face, his eyes so intense she was sure he could see through her, then added, “What else do you want to know?”

“Everything,” she answered. It was true but mostly she wanted to know about him.

* * *

It took twenty minutes for Jane to come back and half that for Ashley to decide that this Kaidan was the same Kaidan. Or rather, the person Kaidan would have been, given the chance. His hair had gone gray at the temples but was still perfectly styled and looked as soft as she remembered it. His voice still had the same smokey rasp that sent butterflies through her stomach. He had the same dry sense of humor, the same steadfast sincerity, and the same care and loyalty for the people who mattered to him.

She could see it in his expression when he looked up at Jane and asked, “You good?”

“Yeah, I’m good.” She ran her hand through her flaming red hair and Ashley couldn’t help but compare it to the way Shepard used to rub his buzz cut. “The three of us need to chat though. We need to figure out what we’re doing with this.”

“Doing?” Kaidan asked.

Instead of answering, Jane thrust her hand through the rift. The arm that appeared on Ashley’s side was gray and almost skeletal, crisscrossed with glowing blue cables. It clawed at her with inhuman fingers. Kaidan swore and yanked Jane back by her shoulders. As soon as it was on the right side, the limb went back to fully human.

“We can’t just leave this for anyone to find.”

It occurred to Ashley that the safest thing would be to bury it. Set off another nuke and make sure nothing and no one came through. Then she looked up at Kaidan and she didn’t know what she’d do if she lost him again.


	5. Kaidan

“The easiest thing to do is destroy it,” Jane said. 

A stab of icy dread lanced through her chest. The fact that she was right made it all the worse. It was Kaidan who actually found the voice to say what she wanted to.

“No.” 

The word was cold and hard and left no room for argument. It caught Ashley off-guard and judging by the change in Jane’s posture it surprised her too. Kaidan, however, didn’t seem to notice. All of his attention was on Ashley and the look on his face was as desperate as his voice was firm.

“We’re not destroying it.”

“I said easiest. That doesn’t mean best.” Her eyes shifted from Kaidan to Ashley. “You have . . . resources that aren’t available to us and it’s obvious your recovery is ahead of ours. The ability to exchange information would help us a lot.”

“We could help each other,” Ashley corrected. “Kaidan says you cured the genophage. I’m sure our krogan would love to know how.”

“So we keep it open. We can use it for information sharing, exchange research, get a whole science collective going down here. We’ll still need to put some security measures in place. My first recommendation would be a round-the-clock guard.”

That was enough to make Kaidan look at her. Jane raised an eyebrow and Kaidan tilted his head and Ashley was reminded of Shepard and Garrus, how they could communicate in the field without saying anything. Eventually he nodded.

“I’ll do it,” he said. Then he looked back to Ashley and added, “I want to do it.”

“Spectre Williams?”

“I’m here already,” she answered. Kaidan let out a breath, too shaky to be a normal exhale, too quiet to be a gasp. “And I want to stay too.”

* * *

Jane left. Although their relays were working they were not always reliable and leaving sooner meant getting someone back sooner. And then, with any luck, more reliable relays and a stable communications network.

The Reaper that came with Ashley was replaced by another one. They seemed to have different specialties, which she didn’t exactly understand since they seemed to operate in some kind of consensus. The new one seemed more science-focused and sent down a new battery of scans and programs for her to run. And the fact of the matter was she didn’t have to understand it, just do as she was told.

Biscuit went back in his ball and, after she pulled a beam in front of her side of the rift, she let him down to run around again. She hoped they would be spending quite a bit of time there and she wanted him to get familiar with the area.

Kaidan pulled over a chair and opened a rations bar. Ashley had left her food on the ship but she took a seat as well with a bottle of water.

“I think it’ll be nice,” he said. “We can clean the place up, set up a few research stations, get some kind of window in place. Keep people from following Shepard’s example.”

“And Biscuit’s.”

“And Biscuit’s.” He rubbed the back of his neck again and she busied herself with her water to give him time to work out what he wanted to say. “I lied. Kind of. I’m not here because I want to guard this thing.”

“Yeah. You know, this reminds me of a conversation I had a while back with someone I cared about. About lighthouses, their keepers.”

“I love lighthouses.”

“I know.” His smile made her blush and dropped her eyes to keep her face from turning completely red. “Staying here, standing watch. It makes us like them. Keepers of the rift. And it had always seemed lonely before. But now I’m thinking, maybe they weren’t really all that alone. I don’t feel alone anymore.”

Kaidan nodded. “Me either.”


End file.
